2005年NPR美国国家公共电台十一月-Dating Web Site Plants Seeds of Love

Anchor: a lot of farm work. Tractors have satellite guided systems, harvest machines are faster and more efficient, and with automated 1 machinery 2, cows can almost milk themselves. But the isolation 3 of farm work will never go away. Long hours and long distances can put a dent 4 in a farmer's social life. When you have to rise before dawn, dinner and movie is a bit impractical 5.
Enter Jerry Miller 6, an advertising 7 and PR man from Ohio; he created a website called "farmersonly.com". It all started, Miller says, when he met a woman on an alpaca farm.

Miller: She got a divorce and when I was talking to her, she said, 'I'm really afraid that I'm never gonna meet anybody new.' And I said, 'What are you talking about? You are such a great person. You'll meet someone.' And she goes, 'How can you meet somebody working on a farm all day.' And I said, 'Well, you might have a point here, it's a little… the dating pool's a little sparse 8 out here.' She called me and said she tried online dating, and was contacted by a bunch of guys, from the ci(ties)…you know, bigger cities. She said city folks just don't get it.

Anchor: What didn't they get?

Miller: They just don't understand the life style. You know, they say, 'well, what do you, you work Monday through Friday, why won't we meet Saturday.' She goes, 'that's, are you kidding? That's one of my busiest days.' Or 'when we meet at seven tonight?' 'Well, the sun doesn't go down until eight tonight. You know.'

Anchor: Well, if I listen to you tell the story, it sounds that farmers don't have even enough time to date each other.

Miller: That's very true. It's funny because one of the last posts that gave me a chuckle 9, this one, a lady said, 'I really need a date, but I can't date during harvest season.'

Anchor: So call me after October.

Miller: Yeah, right.

Anchor: Who's using this site? Are they all farmers?

Miller: No, I say, see, I started off, you know, I put it together for farmers, and talking to a rural pe(ople)…you know, rural living in and out the country, you know, surrounded by farm land, and small towns. I found they had the same problem. I wanted only people that can relate to the farmer life style.

Anchor: How many people use this site?

Miller: Well, I launched it in May and it took about 2 to 3 months to get the first 200 people on. I had one person come on from Texas and then finally somebody from Indiana and then somebody from California and so on. Then it started growing at a nice pace, but just this last month, it had a couple of thousand people come on, and now that it had media stories that have been out this week. I've had so many people come to the site that actually crashed the site the last day.

Anchor: I had hard times (Oh.) logging on myself.

Miller: I found out that the story about the site went all over the AP wire. Think there are over two to three thousands radio stations, talking about it just yesterday. I did an Interview on Fox, Good Morning American was at my office yesterday, CBS is coming here in a couple of hours. We are now getting calls from all around the world. They want to interview me in England Tonight. And we don't even go to England, he kidding he (is) a member from Europe.

Anchor: Have you made any matches?

Miller: I know there is quite a few people that have been matched up already and already dropped off the site, which was amazing, that’s actually when there was only a few hundred people on.

Anchor: So you started the site, you made a promise to that farmer that was looking for a date. Did you find someone for her? Has she found a mate?

Miller: Not yet. Actually I just talked to her the other night and I said, 'have you found anybody yet?' she goes, 'I haven't even had time to go on the site.' Are you kidding me? She said 'it was, last time I was on there, only a couple hundreds people on there and I didn't see anybody.' I said, 'Well, now there's thousands of people on there.' She said, 'Wow, I'd better get back on there.'

Anchor: Jerry Miller is founder 10 of internet dating site for farmers called "farmersonly.com". He spoke 11 to us from Beachwood, Ohio. Thanks so much for talking to us.

Miller: You are welcome.